Soul Provider live at West Seattle Street Festival 


I'll break from voice for this podcast and present some music. I said I wouldn't do music because of the RIAA problems with copyright, but this music slides right past the RIAA. The West Seattle Junction Street Festival has one great feature which sets it somewhat apart from the other, great, street festivals here in Seattle - on Saturday night from 8:00 pm to midnight - there's always a great band on stage in the middle of California Avenue SW and the music is always jamming because it's "Dancing in the Street" time. For four hours several hundred residents, kids included, gather in the street and dance, wear blinking LEDs on their bodies and generally jam in one giant community blow-out. This is a 27-minute presentation of this year's music by the Seattle soul and funk band "Soul Provider." The band is comprised of very accomplished musicians and they've been providing what they call a "sensational soul funk revue" for quite a few years now. The band has a large number of MP3s on their download page coupled with the fact that this capture is in a public setting gives me the feeling that there won't be any RIAA concerns. Enjoy - the recording is pretty good and definitely captures the live, jive, feeling of the night.


 

The West Seattle Junction Street Festival runs from Friday through Sunday at the end of the second week of July. It's one of a number of Seattle neighborhood street festivals and always draws score thousands over the three-day run. Most of the festivals run from 9 or 10 in the morning through 6 or 7 in the evening and nearly all of them feature one, two, or even more music stages. The distinguishing musical feature of the West Seattle festival has been the Saturday night "dancing in the streets" music jam. Of the fairs I've attended, the Fremont fair, the West Seattle fair, and the Ballard Seafood festival are the ones which draw me back. The University District festival and Capitol Hill block party are geared for and draw the younger, more hip and more punk, crowds. The Fremont Solstice fair draws the entire city with the West Seattle and Ballard fairs drawing the bulk of the families and those Gen-X and Gen-Y crowds who live in these two larger neighborhoods.

I was expecting the sound to be pretty good, based on the Olympus DM-10 digital recorder's specifications. The digital recorder isn't exactly "high fidelity," but with relatively complete and flat pickup from 80 Hz through 8000 Hz, it's better than AM radio. I also dickered with the digital audio to ramp up some of the lower and higher frequencies. Based on the "pretty good" quality of the resulting audio file, I'll probably try and capture a few more local bands at more street festivals.

I'll also return to voice and essays in future podcasts. For now, enjoy the music - it's 60's and 70's Soul, Funk and good dancing music. 

Posted: Sun - July 17, 2005 at 11:17 AM          

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